


Fate Really Ought to Give Happier Endings

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pirates, Ramsay is a monster, Revenge, Theon Greyjoy as a siren, as usual, siren au, slowburn, sort of an inverse Little Mermaid AU i guess, stark family mentioned - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 01:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: "When you come, are you going to rain ruin on my ship?""I won't need to.  I'll sing for you, and you will bring the ruination for yourself."Or, Sansa Stark needs revenge, and legends tell tales of people just like her managing to get it.





	Fate Really Ought to Give Happier Endings

Sansa had heard tales of the sirens before. Even in Winterfell, leagues from the sea, old folk could be found to tell stories about women, raped and murdered on the sea, returning to seek vengeance. Bran had always loved them and swore up and down that he would see them someday.

(She never bother pointing out that to see them would hardly be a good thing.)

Thanks to Ramsay Bolton, none of her family would. She did not know how much of the legend was true, but if there was any justice in the world, the kernel of truth at the center would be the right one.

"I'll be back," she told the pirate. She stood at the port of the ship, arms bound and secretly glad for it. She had changed a great deal in the fortnight she had been held captive here, and she was not sure that she could bear to live in a world where happy families could be taken hostage by pirates, could be murdered for the fun of it, where girls could be savagely beaten and raped when there was no hope of a hero coming to her rescue.

The world was ugly, and she was perversely happy to be rid of it.

Ramsay grinned, unfairly handsome. "Will you? And when you come, are you going to rain ruin on my ship?"

She leaned toward him and smiled back, uncharacteristically ugly. "I won't need to. I'll sing for you, and you will bring the ruination for yourself."

The sick joy in his eyes faded. If she was perfectly, foolishly honest, she would admit that there had been a small delight in seeing him first board her father's ship. Not in the violence or the fear, but in seeing a handsome rogue take their journey in such a different direction. Jeyne Poole had snuck her romance novels before, and many of then had started similarly. Dark, dangerous men hiding good, brave hearts; bold women waiting for someone to love their daring. She briefly thought that Ramsay would be that man, but the blood staining the deck and the scars marring every part of her body, visible or not, inside and out, said otherwise. His crew was known to be brutal, well-deserving of the flayed man on their flag, but she had never imagined people capable of the cruelty she endured. He was cruel for fun, and now that she retreated into the walls of her mind when he lashed out, her entertainment value had dropped.

"You've grown boring," he said. "And I have no need for boring, useless things." Then, to one of his men, "lighten the load."

Sansa gave a yelp of surprise when the crewman swiped one arm under her knees, lifting her off the ground and propelling her over the side of the ship.

 

 

_She had always been a little afraid of the ocean, but it wasn't so bad. The water flooding her nose and mouth hurt, and the taste made her gag, but there was music here. Beautiful music, high and clear and strong. To die here would not be so terrible. She closed her eyes against the sting of the salt, heart latching on to one of the strands of music that was lower than the rest._

 

 

She was supposed to die in the ocean.

It was the first thought with any meaning, though she did not understand what it meant at first.

The sky was incredibly blue here. She liked the look of it, and wondered why she'd never bothered to lie down and look up like this. A few lazy, hazy white clouds drifted across, but they were in no hurry. Sansa was in no hurry either, and she enjoyed her rest until the sun grew so hot that her skin started to hurt.

Not all of her skin. Some of it was cold.

She was supposed to die in the ocean, but the sun was too hot and she wasn't really in the ocean. So where was she?

It was that thought that scared the laziness away, and she sat up with a start and a cringe. Oh, she had been out in the sun too long. Soon her shoulders would peel and her face would freeze in an attempt to keep the skin from cracking. Nonetheless, she sat up and looked around.

She was on a beach, legs half submerged in the water. The island looked to be big, with trees starting a short way off, but she didn't see any sign of people. No ports, not ships, no homes. Just Sansa, laying alone in the sand when she ought to be a bloated, floating husk of herself in the water somewhere.

She looked out at the horizon, and for a second she thought she must be mistaken about being alone on the island. There was somebody swimming a ways off—her rescuer, surely. Of course she was rescued; she couldn't possibly have swam here herself, bound and weighed down by her dress. He must have been out in a boat

(Where was the boat?)

when he saw her in the water 

(Wouldn't Ramsay's men have noticed him?)

and sailed her to shore. It was completely reasonable.

She staggered to her feet and waved her arms in the air, hoping that he would hear her shouting and swim back to shore. He could take her home.

He raised one arm in return, and disappeared.

"No," she said, more confused than anything. Where had he gone? Nobody could stay under the water for that long. Then, panic building, "no! Sir, you have to come back! Sir!"

A head popped up, much closer, and panic gave way to fear. _Nobody could stay under for that long._

"Just hang on," he called back. "No need to get worked up." He dove back down, and as his head disappeared, _a tail flicked out from the waves._

The boy had a tail.

A boy with a tail was swimming right for her.

Had she not nearly drowned, had she not been unconscious for gods know how long, she might have tried to run. As it was, her head was foggy and her legs too shaky to carry her fast enough. All things considered, if he killed her now, it would just be a faster death than what she would face on a deserted island.

He resurfaced about ten feet out, wet and grinning. "My word, you've roasted in the sun. You're nearly as red as your hair."

She gaped at him. Was that really how he wanted to start this? Did he honestly think that this was the proper way to start this conversation? Him, inhuman and ocean-bound, and her, stuck on this island—he couldn't start by inquiring after her health or explaining what had happened, because he had to start by insulting her absolutely understandable appearance.

She cleared her throat pointedly. "I realize that you're half fish, but I should think that you're human enough to know better than to say that to a lady."

His smile broadened. "My apologies."

She had a million questions—about where they were, why they were there, what came next. She'd had ample time to think them through, and she intended to keep him there until they were answered.

"You're a boy," she said dumbly. It had not been one of her questions, so she really didn't know why it was the first thing she said.

God, his smile was so smug. "Well spotted. Though, I suppose, I'm not a boy in a human sense -"

" _Were_ you a boy in the human sense?"

_Were you a human? Are you the stuff of legends? Were men raised to fear you, women to see justice in you?_

"Once," he said. "Not so long ago."

"And now you're a siren," she said, feeling a little weak. She hadn't believed in them, really. She believed that men may go mad if they stare out into the nothingness of the horizon for too long. She believed that men liked to woo women with stories of danger. She believed that people could talk themselves into seeing anything. When she made a promise to Ramsay, it was with spite, not certainty.

His smile vanished. "In a way."

"But you're a _boy._ "

He moved a little closer, hands resting on the sand to hold him parallel to the ground. "It isn't what you think. None of this is what you think."

Sansa sat in the sand, bundling her skirts so they'd stay out if the water. "Tell me what it is, then."

His word usage did not make him into a wonderful storyteller, but his animation did. He painted her a mural of stories: it all started with the Drowned God seeing the torture and deaths of people at sea and feeling an uncharacteristic pity. He decided to take the best of them—the bravest, the most honorable, the strongest—and give them a chance to make things right. These chosen ones inspired the legend of the sirens: women who sang sailors to their deaths. It was only the evil being targeted, in truth, but it was usually women doing the targeting. It was women who were often raped at sea, women whose bravery went unrecognized. There were men, but it was the women who sailors feared the most.

There was a harsh beauty to it all. A harsh god with harsh values, but a god who saw value in life nonetheless. A god who values the strong, those who would take what they wanted, and thus gave people the chance to do so.

"And you save people," she said, dubious. "You saved me."

The boy shook his head, now dry. "No, we don't save people."

"But you did. Sir," she said, stumbling a little in her uncertainty about what title to give him, "I owe you my life."

She was not experienced in owing people things but there was no question now. Death held her, and this siren took her back.

He recoiled when she reached out one hand for him, and she would have blushed if her skin didn't already burn red. "You owe me no such thing," he insisted. "What I did today is nothing to be repaid."

"I offer my thanks nonetheless," she said, hand still outstretched. "It's all I have to offer, Sir—"

"Theon," he said. He looked at her hand, hesitant. The hand he eventually gave her was broken, missing two fingers. She was careful not to wince at the sight. "Theon Greyjoy."

She had heard of him. Everybody had heard when the Greyjoy boy, the youngest and last living heir, was taken by pirates. The only thing anybody knew for certain about what happened to him was that the boy's genitals were sent to his father in a box. He never returned, so people assumed the worst.

Rightfully so, she thought, looking at his tainted hand and the outline of a tail behind him. She grasped his hand and smiled. "Sansa Stark."

 

 

When he left for the night, it was after giving her advice to find shade, shelter, and clean water; to try to make a fire. It was with a promise to return the next day with something to eat. It was with Sansa watching him leave, drinking in the scars on his chest and back.

He had died, and he was brought back. He had saved her, and she didn't think he was supposed to.

It didn't matter, she told herself. She was alive, and that was that. If she didn't follow his instructions, she wouldn't stay that way for long.

"I don't know how to make a fire," she told the trees, cross. "I can find water and shelter, sure, but I have never made my own fire." 

The trees said nothing. They never had before, but she'd just met a boy with a tail. She wouldn't have been surprised if they had done.

She found water and a place to rest, but could not make a fire. She knew there were rocks that were good for it, but did not know what rocks or how to find them. She thought that she might make a spark if she could make enough friction with a stick, but her hands started to blister before she could prove that false with any certainty.

"I don't know what I'm doing at all," she told the trees again. A few of them, if she looked closely, almost seemed to have faces. She talked to them directly. "I never thought I'd complain about being wealthy, but it's doing me a disservice now."

She gathered leaves to rest on her arms and legs. It did not block out the chill entirely, but she was tired enough that it didn't matter.

 

 

He brought her fish. That ought not have been such a surprise, since he was incapable of leaving the ocean, but she grew weary of raw fish quickly.

“You could learn to make a fire,” he said, lips quirking at the frown on her face. He smiled a lot when Sansa was unhappy, like he hadn’t seen anything so delightful as her range of emotions. She didn’t know much about how sirens lived when they weren’t taking down the evil, so maybe he hadn’t. Not since before he was kidnapped, anyway.

"I could drag you up here to teach me," she threatened.

"All the way to the woods?"

"I'll carry you like a bride," she said, holding her arms up as though she was cradling a maiden.

He laughed, delighted. "I should like to see you try." Then, "are you married? I never asked."

He hadn't asked her much at first at all. Maybe he didn't want to dredge up memories if that life was over.

"No," she said. "No, my parents were still arranging a match. I was very particular, you know."

He ran a grey-ish hand through his drying hair. People from the Iron Islands all had that tinge, from what she could tell. Maybe they gave up color to keep the salt in their veins. Still, his hair shined with streaks of gold. "I can imagine. You wouldn't settle for anything less that a prince."

"I turned the prince down too," she said, smiling when he gave a bark of laughter. "Rather, I agreed when my father suggested that I should. I fancied myself in love with him at first, but I grew out of that. Prince Joffrey was a beastly boy, and he inspired the wrong sort of fear."

"Robert Baratheon's boy," Theon said thoughtfully. "He looked breakable."

So do you, she wanted to say. Beautiful and breakable. Scars made him imperfect and utterly attainable, despite being the farthest thing from what she wanted and what she could have. All the same, he was all she had.

"You've seen him?" It was hard to picture Theon being human—seeing the prince, walking on land, wearing armor.

"Not in years," he said. "Joffrey was just a lad when I saw him. He didn't look particularly kingly, though. Was there another man in mind?"

There hadn't been. Dozens of men were suggested, but Sansa dreamed of bravery and honor. She needed someone like her father, like Robb, and such men were few and far between.

"What about you? Any women catch your eye?"

"Every woman." Sansa laughed, but Theon was completely serious. "I slept with every woman who would have me. It's the Ironborn way. But I had no wife, no."

That was almost a relief. She wouldn't have known what to do around him if one of them was married. They were both alive, changed though circumstances may have been.

"No siren ladies to speak of? I hear you have your pick of them." She frowned for a second, thoughtful. "Do sirens ever have children?"

He shook his head; no to both. "All yours, milady," he said.

She startled. "No, I'm not—you're—we aren't—"

He gave another harsh, bright laugh, and she could only hold a scowl for a second before her own laughter followed. Her horror held, of course, but a lack of love did not keep her from noticing that he had a very nice smile.

 

 

“Are you still alive?” The question might have been rude to ask; she wasn’t sure on the etiquette of asking something inhuman what it was. She wasn’t sure if there was need of etiquette now, and Theon hardly seemed to care.

“You could touch my chest to find out,” he said, swimming forward with a smarmy grin. She looked at his chest—lean and strong, with a smattering of golden hair—and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t need to know that badly,” she said, and her lips twitched when he laughed.

It was peculiar to find that she actually liked him. His humor, even in her distress over her new situation, had been bothersome at the start, but she found that there was a hollowness to it now. It was similar to the hollow in her chest, and it made her wonder if she would have become a siren if she had died.

His eyes, his smile, his laugh—all a little hollow, like he was putting them on for her sake. But he was soaking in her company every day, and they were a little fuller than they had been in the beginning.

“Truly,” she said. “Are you dead, or is this a different sort of life?”

"What is dead may never die," he said, "but rises again, harder and stronger."

That hardly answered her question. Dead and alive, both? What sort of god did the ironborn claim? One that held pirates in high regard, but offered a second chance to the victims?

"I thought your god looked kindly on raping and reaving," Sansa said, and grimaced at her own harsh tone.

Theon, however, shook his head. "He looks kindly on strength. Sometimes there is a special strength, a hidden strength, in the broken."

She thought of her last words, and it seemed true enough. She thought of Theon's missing fingers and gauged abdomen, and thought it nearly romantic.

"But you didn't let me die," she said.

"No. I didn't."

She looked back in the water, waiting for him to continue, but there was nobody there.

 

 

"Tell me of the pirates," she said one day. "Yours, not mine."

He shook his head. "No, that's not for today. But if you come here—give me your hand—if you touch just here, you can feel my gills."

 

 

"My mother would have hated you," she said, giggling at a story Theon told about a whore he met in a tavern. It was crass, undeniably so; it was the sort of story nobody would have told her in Winterfell.

"Oh? Tell me about your Starks."

And so, for the first time, she told him full stories. She told him of Robb and Jon, wise souls in young bodies. Arya, fierce and sharp and opinionated. Bran, eager and disobedient, but winsome. Rickon, young and sweet. Her parents, so in love and so devoted to their children.

Ned died during the initial boarding of the pirates. Jon died while he and Robb tried and failed to defend the children. Catelyn and Robb died soon after, during a doomed attempt to negotiate. Sansa—alone, alone, alone—died, but only on the inside.

Theon was enraptured. His tail flicked above the surface of the water, scales shimmering with blues and greens and grays when the light touched.

"They sound wonderful," he said.

She shrugged. "Infuriating, but wonderful." It was harder to remember the infuriating bits, now. She only thought of her happiness with them, and sometimes the ache at her loss nearly broke through the wall she'd carefully built on the ship. It was a wall of iron, but even iron rusted.

"Nothing like my family," he said.

She knew of the Greyjoys. She knew of salt wives and the iron price, of rebellions and losses. Even so, she could not imagine a man like Theon being born out of pure hate and tragedy. "Were all of them so terrible?"

"Not all," he acknowledged. "Not my sister. My mother drifted away from us when my brothers died, but my sister looked out for me. At great cost to us both, but she did."

They sat in silence for a while. Sansa looked at the sky, dark and cloudy. Theon looked at Sansa, not bothering to hide it.

"Did my father ever look for me?" The question was a grudging one, but his mask of indifference could not mask the hope.

She ought to lie.

Theon had never lied to her. Refused to answer, yes, but never lied.

"Your sister did. Word was that she searched against your father's wishes, but she searched."

He nodded. "That sounds like him."

"I would have looked for you," she blurted. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but it rang true. "If I had known you before, I would never have stopped looking."

"There's only one reason you and I would have known each other so well, and I would have held no use for you anymore."

Hogwash. Absolute, utter hogwash. "Not everything needs to have a use. Sometimes you want things for other reasons."

There was this look on his face—guilt, and maybe affection. Guilt and regret. Guilt and belief. Guilt and hope. Guilt and guilt and guilt.

"You are a better person than most," he finally said, but his face still spoke volumes about something that she didn't yet understand.

 

 

Farther into the forest, Sansa found a little clearing. She made a more permanent home there: leaves for a bed, curved stones and bits of bark to hold water, a collection of sharper sticks and stones in case she was wrong about a lack of predators. 

"It would be nice if he could come back here," she told one of her trees. "It would be nice to never be alone, and he's as good of company as any."

The trees, as always, did not answer. Even so, she fancied that they looked a little smug.

 

 

The midafternoon sun was high and hot, but Theon was unfazed. He cleared his throat, running a hand through salt-heavy hair as he put on his storytelling voice. It was his regular voice, really, but he insisted that his enunciation and slow speaking was something else entirely.

“There was once was a prince—no, there’s no point—there once was a young lord who took to the seas,” Theon began. “He had no great love for the sea itself, but he did love power. He loved to be loved by people, so he tried to become the greatest of his people.

“One day, in an attempt to best a more powerful enemy, he was captured. He was—well, he was broken. The things that gave him power were stripped from him, and he was nothing at all.”

Sansa didn’t look at him. She laid back and looked at the sky, listening carefully. There were no clouds, just a pale blue, as far as the eye could see. It was blue like her mother’s eyes, blue like her own. Blue like peace, like forget-me-nots, like a witch in King’s Landing used to say Sansa’s soul was.

Theon was silent for a long while, so Sansa reached a hand to skim over the surface of the water. “What happened to him?”

“He jumped overboard. He was so broken, Sansa. The pirates who held him didn’t even need to fear him anymore. They looked away for a moment, and the lord jumped. He let the sea swallow him up, and when it spat him back out, he was reborn.”

“What is dead may never die,” she said, but her voice trembled.

He hummed. “The lord traveled around for a while, downing ships when he saw fit. But one day, he saw a familiar one. A ship flying the sigil of his captures. A flayed man flew, and the lord realized that this was his chance to have his revenge.”

Sansa knew that sigil.

“I followed them,” he continued, voice as low as her stable boy in Winterfell when he spoke to a spooked horse. “I followed them for hours, waiting for nightfall to strike fear into their hearts. But before darkness came—”

“Another ship came by,” she whispered.

“Wolves decorated their flag,” he agreed. “The pirates boarded the ship, killing many men. The lord thought to intervene, but they had kept a prisoner. A young woman, and the lord didn’t know what to do.

“If he sang, and the ship went down, she might die. Or, if she was fortunate—or unfortunate; I don’t know—she might be reborn too. Even if she died, it would be a mercy,” he said.

Sansa thought of the scars on her arms and legs. She thought of burns on her stomach and whiplashes on her back. She thought of the permanent ache between her legs, where Ramsay would never fully leave.

“But she was so strong,” Theon whispered. “She was strong and beautiful, undoubtedly a lady. She looked soft, but she was _surviving._ ”

“She felt like she was dying,” Sansa said, more of a gasp than a statement.

“But unlike the lord, she was fighting back. She had more iron and salt in her veins than a thousand ironborn.” Theon sounded pleased, but Sansa couldn’t look at him. She closed her eyes against the sky, a tear trickling down her cheek. He had watched. Her rescuer could have ripped Ramsay apart a thousand times during her captivity, and her suffering might have ended.

She heard the water moving; Theon was coming a little closer. “Then the day came that the pirate grew weary of the lady, and he had her thrown overboard. The lord watched her fall, but instead of leaving her for the Drowned God, he took her for himself. He brought her to an island.”

“Where she would die anyway,” Sansa said.

“But first she would live.”

“Without a family,” Sansa said. Tears leaked out in earnest, now. “Without a home. She would have an island, and she would have the lord, but only ever in part.”

“And he could only ever have her in part.” Theon’s hand brushed against her fingertips, but she didn’t respond. “But sometimes part is enough.”

“And sometimes it isn’t,” she hissed. “Sometimes only whole is enough.”

He didn’t argue with her. His hand—only partial, only partially whole—withdrew. The water moved again, and when she could finally open her eyes, she was alone. All alone, and less than whole.

 

 

She did not return to the beach for several days. She stayed in the forest, eating berries and nuts and whatever else looked edible. She drank water to fill her stomach when her gathering could not, and her heart was empty in a way that hurt.

“He could have saved me,” she told the trees.

(Is it really saving if he’s killing her?)

“He could have put my family out of our misery before we had to watch each other die.”

(But they all would have died, regardless.)

“I wouldn’t have been alone.”

(Theon always seems alone. Would Sansa have ended up as a solitary siren, with no company at all?)

“I wouldn’t have known what I was missing, or that there was any other path.”

(Instead she ended up with a friend, who was broken, but filled up the holes in her heart with stories and legends and jokes.)

“This isn’t right,” she insisted, looking into the face of the tree nearest to her. “I didn’t want it.”

(Neither did he. He did what he thought was right, and has continued to try to do right by her since.)

 

 

When she finally met him at the shore, he spoke before she could. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ll go out and find you a boat. A raft. Rescuers. Anything to get you back to the mainland. You can have a fresh start.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I want.”

Theon looked truly, completely lost. “I don’t know what you want.”

_I want to live out the rest of my days with my family. I want none of this to have ever happened. I want to be who I was. I want to be whole again._

_I want us both to be whole again, alive. I want us to have met under different circumstances, when you might have courted me and wed me._

“I want Ramsay’s head on a spike,” she said, settling for the easiest of all.

He nodded, not looking surprised at all. “I can get you that.”

“No,” Sansa said. No, that was not what she wanted. Perhaps she had spoken too soon. “No, I want to get it for myself.”

 

 

It was a small island, so she could only hope that Theon only ever went to their part of the beach. She could only hope that he ignored the rest, and that he didn’t have anybody else watching the other shores. As far as she knew, he did not speak to other sirens, but how would she know? She only had him for so many hours during the day; he could be doing anything for the rest.

On the other side of the island, the sand was rockier. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the waves seemed choppier. It was a harsh sea here, and that seemed as good a sign as any. This felt like the sea of the Drowned God; it was hard to imagine the deity of the depraved existing in the calm, clear waters that she shared with Theon. It was hard to imagine a god of piracy and raiding watching over them when Theon was spinning yarns for her, or tying seaweed into ropes, or letting her fingers skate over his gills while air bubbles burst free of him.

No, the Drowned God was here.

(Because Theon wasn’t.)

She drew Ramsay Bolton’s face in her mind, forcing herself to think of every single detail. She painted him in as harsh a light as possible, and imagined herself throwing it out into the open.

_Him. Take me to him, and help me ruin him. I have an oath to keep. Give him to me._

She walked into the water, continuing her prayer.

Theon’s tales nearly always involved the ocean. Maybe it was as cathartic for him to relive old tales as it was for her to lose herself in them. He told her stories of krakens, of pirates, of monstrous creatures and monstrous people. He told her about ships he had taken, and he told her about the sorts of men he kept on his crew. His father always wanted more, demanded more, and Theon would go out to find it. More gold, more women, more bloodshed. Theon held little love for his father, but his stories did have nostalgia woven in.

She could not understand his love now, as she tried to swim against the current, but she could easily picture the violence.

_Take me to Ramsay Bolton, that I might make him into your newest sacrifice._

She did not feel called in any particular direction, so she swam onward.

“There was once a girl,” she huffed to herself, moving her arms in time with her words. “The girl had a promise to keep, but no way to keep it.

“She had to take a leap of faith.”

A leap into the water. A leap into the depths of the sea, where the ground may rest ten feet below or ten thousand. A leap into the future, which may go on for a minute or may go on for a hundred years.

“She asked the sea to carry her all the way to her destiny. She asked it to carry her into the arms of the man she most needed to see, that she might fulfill her vow.”

Had she been swimming for an hour? A day? Was she making any progress, or was she going to drown no closer to the pirates than she began? She was breathless and weary, but she feared that she would only sink if she tried to tread water. She could only push forward.

“And the sea listened,” she bellowed, more of a plea than a promise. “The sea heard her, and it paid heed!”

Sansa was sinking. Her mouth barely broke the surface.

“The girl knew that she might die!” Gasp. “She knew, and she made peace with it!” Gasp. “So long as she kept her promise, she would let the sea take her!”

She could not inhale, because she was underwater.

She tried to imagine herself finding Ramsay, wrapping her fingers around his throat, but the man who she pictured was not the same one. She thought of Theon one last time, and her throat tightened a little with regret before she didn’t see anything at all.

 

 

“You are a fool,” Theon spat. She had never seen him so vividly alive, so completely focused on her. She’d never seen the water part to make way for him or the sky darken to match his eyes. “You are an fool with a deathwish. You nearly got yourself killed for no reason.”

She cleared her throat, grimacing at the salt that scraped her raw. Swallowing her weight in seawater was no pleasant task. “Not for no reason,” she rasped. “For justice. For revenge.”

“You were never going to make it. You were going to drown.”

“I didn’t drown,” she insisted. “I’m right here.”

“Only because I found you,” he roared. Not at her, never at her. At the sky. At the waves. At Ramsay Bolton, wherever he was. “Only because the current carried you into my path, and you weren’t dead already. That was pure luck, love, and you cannot take the credit for it.”

Maybe the Drowned God listened, she wanted to say. Maybe he carried her into the arms of the man she needed to see, even if it was not the man she asked for.

Instead, she offered him a shaky smile. “My hero.”

He rolled his eyes, tale flicking with annoyance. “No. No, I am not your hero. Heroes are lucky enough to have damsels in distress. You’re just stupid.”

Her grin broadened. “The love story of the ages.”

“The worst love story of all time,” he said, though she could see his lips twisting against a smile. “Who wants to hear about lovers that can’t be together?” A good question. Her eyes softened, and he hastened to continue when he saw it. “And usually the lovers are in love. You and I would be ever the disappointment.”

“Take heart,” she said, the gravel in her voice loosening some. “Sometimes the lovers only see each other in that light after the daring rescue. And honestly,” she said, “thank you. Thank you for rescuing me.”

She failed to kill Ramsay Bolton, but she had survived. If she lived, if this was some sort of sign, she would have another chance.

 

 

Sansa had been particular about who she wanted to marry before she met Theon. She had told him as much, and it had been true. Even so, she had half given up on her romantic tendencies by the time everything happened. She had half given up on true love and wealth and happiness all being wrapped up in one man, all being given to her because of love at first sight. 

She had not given up on happiness, but she had given up on magic.

This, though—this was magic. Theon, resurrected, was magic. Sansa, somehow finding her way to Theon, half unconscious and on the brink of dying, was magic. 

“Do you believe in fate?”

Theon frowned. He was cleaning a fish for her, removing scales with sharp rocks and nimble fingers. “No.”

She hummed, not at all deterred. “Why not?”

“Because I should think that there would be happier endings if fate was involved.”

“But maybe that’s the point,” she insisted. “Maybe the sad endings are paving the way to happier ones. Or maybe our suffering now—”

“Leads to greater joy in the afterlife?” He scoffed at her, openly rolling his eyes. He had calmed down some since her attempt to find Ramsay, and she was glad for it. He was a delight when he was happy, but an unpleasant companion when he was upset. “Let me tell you, my suffering did not give me a heavenly experience.”

“You met me.”

He paused at that. “Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, I did. But this isn’t a normal afterlife, and you and I are not a normal ending. I don’t know what the Drowned God has in store, but I’m not sure that this is a reward.”

It’s fate, she thought. This is not a story about princes and princesses and true love’s kiss. It was a tale of murder and revenge, lords and ladies, monsters masquerading as men. It was the sort of tale that Bran would have loved. If there was a happy ending, Sansa might have loved it too.

“I believe in fate,” she said.

“Of course,” he said, giving another eye roll, albeit fonder. “Of course you do. When you die, you’ll have to find a way to tell me what happens.”

_I think we’re fated to be together, but I don’t know how._

“Your Drowned God will tell you,” she said instead, and Theon huffed out a complaint about Sansa not knowing anything about the Drowned God. Maybe she didn’t, but maybe he didn’t either.

 

 

She did not know how long she had been on the island, but she knew that she had changed even since Ramsay. She had stopped drifting off, and the sky was beautiful instead of hypnotizing. She had forgiven Theon for his failure to let her die, and she had forgiven herself for being the one to survive.

She was healing, she realized, looking at the freckles on her shoulders and arms. She was healing, changing, and it wasn’t such a terrible thing. 

“I want to kill Ramsay Bolton,” she told Theon, as she did every day. “I want his blood on my hands.”

“I don’t know how to make that happen,” he said, and she knew it was the truth. Theon finding Ramsay that first time was blind luck in it of itself. It was luck that there had been an island near enough for him to swim her there without drowning her. It was luck that she was still alive. They had been lucky, but that did not mean that they would be lucky enough for Ramsay to be nearby again now, for Theon to get Sansa there, for him to get her access to the pirate before he drowned or got away.

Theon did not believe they would be lucky enough.

Sansa had faith in Theon and faith in the Drowned God, so she was considering something that would mean she didn’t need luck.

“Alright,” she sighed, collapsing into the sand and burying her toes in the wet mud. “I want a story, then.”

Theon grinned. “Tell me a story.”

She scowled at him.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Fair is fair. I’ve given you dozens, maybe hundreds. Give me one.”

“Oh, all right. Fine.” She considered. What stories did she know that she hadn’t given him already? She didn’t have that many stories of her own, nothing that exciting. She had aimed for perfection, and perfection seldom led to excitement. Theon knew most of the legends and folktales that she did, so what did she have to offer him?

“There was once a—there was once a lady,” she began, ad libbing. 

“Wonderful,” Theon said, burrowing into the sand. “I love those.” He smiled at her, and it was completely carefree. It was light and true, and it occurred to her that maybe he was healing the same way she was.

“And this lady fell in love with a fish.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Kinky.”

“Not just any fish,” she snapped, splashing him. “This fish was the king of all the ocean, answering only to his god. He had no parents to please, no wife to heed. But she belonged on land, and he belonged in the sea.”

Theon stopped smiling.

“They could only ever be near each other, and neither ever felt close enough. What were they to do? Was she to forget him entirely and find a husband of her own? Was he to go back to the deeps and pretend he had never wanted more?”

Sansa paused, raising her eyebrows for dramatic effect, but she didn’t know where to go from there. She only knew so much of the story.

“Well?” Theon looked up at her, impatient. “What happens?”

“She prays,” Sansa finally said. “She prays to every god she can think of, both of the land and sea. She asks for the fish to change, or for herself to change, so long as they can be together.”

“And?”

“And she walked into the ocean one day, having gotten no answer. It was an act of faith; she just had to trust that somebody would listen. If she loved the fish enough, somebody would surely believe that her cause was a worthy one,” Sansa said. Gods had listened to lesser pleas and lesser needs. Love was a greater cause than revenge, after all. She thought on that more and more, and it seemed a better thought every time.

Theon squinted, dubious, but nodded. “Alright. Is this your take on how sirens came about?”

“What? No,” she said. “Wait, are you asking if the girl became a siren, or if sirens are the result of fish and women—”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t know! This is your tale. I was just asking. If that isn’t what happened, what did?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and flashed a feral smile. “She was never seen again. She walked into the sea, and the sea never gave her back. So maybe she died, and she’s rotting somewhere.”

“Or maybe somebody listened,” Theon finished. “Maybe she was able to be with her fish king.”

“But either way, it’s better than living without him, or with only part,” she said.

 

 

Sansa did not like the night sky nearly so well as day. She loved the stars, but there were not enough of them to light up the rest of the dark. There were not enough of them to make Sansa feel significant again, or to make her feel like there was a point to anything. 

It was that humility that made her choose to take her walk in the middle of the night, under the full moon. She did not know that there was more power on such a night, but it felt like the sort of night where somebody had to be listening.

_I want him_ , she thought, she demanded, she prayed. She didn't even know if the Drowned God could hear her, but she prayed. She did not try to think of Ramsay, to picture his face, instead allowing a better face to come to mind. Light hair instead of dark, thin limbs instead of stocky. She imagined dark scales, and she imagined swimming off toward the horizon with him. She wanted Ramsay in the short term, but she could imagine a wonderful future with somebody else. _I want him, and I will serve you in return. Give me him, and I will give you a thousand thousand men in return. I will sacrifice all of Westeros if I wake in his arms._

____

____

Sansa Stark walked into the water, letting it lap over her calves, her hips, her breasts, her eyes. She did not close them against the sting this time, instead imagining that she was staring into the eyes of the divine.

_Give him to me, and I will give myself to you._

 

 

This time, when the lower strands of music called to her, they called her by name. This time, the notes were joyous instead of dutiful. This time, when Theon sang to her, she sang back.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I butcher the Drowned God? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Not a bit.
> 
> They were meant to be together, folks. Theon and Sansa would have been happy together, and everybody knows it.


End file.
